Athletic equipment in every sport, especially in professional sports, is evolving rapidly as new materials and construction techniques for both operating and protective equipment are developed. Protective gear especially often needs to be a cross or a compromise between efficient operability that will not hinder the natural body movements required of athletic performance and, on the other hand, the covering and thick padding that is often required for protection of the body of the athlete. This is especially true in the game of ice hockey which is fast moving, energetic, and highly dangerous, especially to the athlete playing the goalie position who must face a flurry of fast-moving target objects directed at him and intercept or block them. He also faces danger from collisions with other players, walls, metal goal structures, and sharp ice skate blades. There is great need to protect the body of the goalie, and in recent years a great variety of equipment and methods of construction of protective equipment for goalies has been produced. One type of equipment protects the goalie's hands and forearms, but the hand and forearm obviously must be unrestrained and unencumbered to the extent possible to enable the goalie to perform the catching and deflecting functions in rapid fashion that his duties require and that sets successful performance apart from failure.
A variety of protective constructions for a goalie's hands in the form of gloves in varying degrees of rigidity and resiliency have been designed and marketed. In recent years as durable fabric materials and efficient fastening mechanisms have come into use, more innovative designs have been made possible than could be achieved with the cumbersome and mostly rigid constructions formerly made from leather. The modern materials are more adaptable to innovative shapes and constructions that can improve the functionality of a protective construction without sacrificing protective ability. Again, this has been particularly true in glove constructions for hockey goalies which are of two types: the first is a "blocker" glove, which includes a large padded surface over the back of the hand and forearm and which is generally used to grasp the goalie's hockey stick; the other is a "catch" glove worn on the freehand, which has padding on both the back and palm side and large flexible surfaces to form a pocket in a mit shape for entrapping the hockey puck when possible. A particular problem that this invention seeks to solve in both these types of goalie gloves is that the massive outer construction must be mated to a inner glove that closely fits the user's hand such that detailed movement of the user's fingers will be transmitted without slack to the operating surfaces of the device. For instance, the goalie's blocker glove must securely grasp and control the hockey stick, and a close-fitting, usually soft leather, inner glove is typically permanently fastened within the massive outer structure for this purpose. The inner glove being in intimate contact with the body surface, however, will be subject to absorption of sweat during the athletic contest as the user exerts himself and the glove can additionally be stretched out of shape or damaged from the exertion. As the inner glove becomes uncomfortable, or wet, or actually damaged, the utility of the overall construction will decrease and, therefore, the user's efficiency and athletic performance will also decrease.